 Welcome to Rational Politics. I'm joined again today by Joan Peck, who is running for the Mayor of Longmont. Don't forget, vote before or on November 2nd. Important. We've come in today to talk about a couple of the amendments and propositions that are appearing on the ballots across the state. Joan, welcome back to the studio. Thank you so much for coming in today and trying to unfuddle my mind. Let's first of all talk about Amendment 78. It's describing here something that I just, it's got terms like custodial money and blah, blah, blah. None of it made much sense. It was just total legalese as far as I can see. And I'm sure there's a ton of people out there that don't understand what the heck they're talking about. Could you put this into simple to understand English? Nigel, thank you for asking me back and I'll try. Basically, I do a lot of research or as much as I can and I get it from the 2021 state ballot information book. Hang on. I have not received one of those. You haven't? No. Well, Nigel, you can call for one at 303-866-4799. Okay. This is put out by the Colorado General Assembly Legislative Council and you can also email them at ics.gaatstate.co.us. I've got a horrible feeling, though, that people may have to have a fully charged Kindle or a new paperback book to read when they call that number. It's going to be very busy at this time of the year, so be prepared for a week. I think email is probably best if you do email. Okay. Anyway, let's get back to this. Amendment 78. First of all, what this talks about are custodial funds. And custodial funds are funds new money that the state gets and it is to be appropriated, it's specified as to how it's to be appropriated. This money comes from, for example, lawsuit settlements, for example, opioid money that is sent to the state for specific reasons and it can only be used for that reason. So it's also endowments or people who leave their money, their estate money to the state for specific reasons. This money goes into a transparency fund called the custodial funds transparency fund, obviously. It earns interest until the time that it is appropriated. What this bill is asking is that there be a public hearing at the time that it's to be appropriated. Again, this is all my opinion. I don't understand the reason for the public appropriations or the public hearing on the appropriations because it's not going to change the reason that these funds were given to the state to begin with. Correct. And as far as legislature goes, they're going to have to have perhaps a special session in order to make time for the public input, which might be a real time lag for why they need to be appropriated. Is this making sense to you at all? Well, no, actually it's muddling the waters even more because like yourself, if we get, say, a billion dollars to help for the opioid crisis and I'm just making that number up. If it's been assigned to Colorado to help tackle the opioid crisis, why would you ever, ever, like you said, why would you ever need to have a public hearing about it? Well, I think this brings it into political realm for one thing. But the other thing that I forgot to mention is that when the funds are invested, they earn interest. What this group, whoever put this amendment on the ballot, would like that interest rather than going back into the fund to go into the general fund. I am not sure what the intent of this was and it's hard to find out what the intent of this whole amendment 78 is all about. Plus, this is amending our constitution. Yes, I saw that. So I always have big red flags when an amendment comes up because if you remember the Tabor amendment, that's really caused the state a lot of problems. Yes. That's a red flag for me right there, that it's an amendment. Who's behind this? Why do they want the interest to go into the general fund? What is the reason they want it? What do they want it used for? And to have it in the public forum on the appropriations to me just screams politics. Yeah, it almost sounds as if what they want is the ability of saying taking my one billion and actually reassigning some of that money to something else. Which would be the interest. But only the interest. They couldn't actually take away from the one billion. No, but what they could do is stall it, stall where the appropriations should go and in what timeline they should go. Because holding special sessions in the summer is going to cost a lot of money to get this on track for how it's to be appropriated. It just is a stalling tactic to me. Why? I don't know. I can actually now begin to understand why they'd want to do this because if you can stall a billion dollars, think of the interest. Exactly. That's rolling over into the general fund. And the unknowns on this is why I question it. I understand that totally. Let's now move on to Proposition 119. I know it's something that you're very interested in. It's something that I'm interested in. And that is actually putting up the tax again on marijuana. And of course they go into a whole load of stuff here about how they want to spend it on education. Over the last six years, the marijuana industry in Colorado has raised $1.6 billion in income. 16.4% has been used in education. Now, when we all originally voted for this, I thought a lot more, a lot higher percentage would actually be going into education from the money's raised through taxes. So that was amendment 64 in 2012 that we voted on that. But that was to go into capital construction assistance. So a fund was created for that. So this money goes into the capital construction assistance. So that 16.4% has been pulled out for capital construction. I don't know, and I'm going to be upfront about this. I don't know where the rest of it is as it's sitting in this fund. But this bill, the Learning Enrichment and Academic Progress Program. This is a bill that wants to raise taxes on cannabis, retail sales tax. And they want to create a program outside of our state education system, outside of the school district, enhancement programs, tutoring on any subject or whatever it is the student deems to be lacking in to bring them up to their grade level. My problem with this bill, this program seems to me, and this is just my opinion as I read through it, to be somewhat of a quasi-governmental agency. And the reason I say that is that there will be a board that will decide how these funds are going to be spent. It's not an elected board like our school district is an elected board. This is an appointed board by whoever is running this program. And once the board terms out, they get to decide who's going to be the next person to fill that position rather than have it go to the public to vote for whoever's on that board. My other problem with it is that they are going to decide who gets these dollars. And who's going to be certified. So let me put this in simpler terms. We have for-profit businesses that parents will pay tuition to to have their, you know, for special tutoring on different subjects, etc. And there's a tuition that is garnered from the entity that is providing the education. The LEAP program will, if the parent cannot afford to pay that tuition, then they can apply to the LEAP program for that tuition to be paid to the for-profit entity. The LEAP board will decide whether that student qualifies. I have a real problem with that. I see no equity in this program. A board of non-elected members are going to decide which of our students get to be funded to be able to get outside help. And it's with our tax dollars. Nowhere in this write-up on this ballot do I see private. The word private is totally missing from the description. So to me, that immediately raises a big red flag. The idea seems like a good idea. It is a good idea. But it should be run by our already elected school boards. Exactly. And it should be run by our school districts. Absolutely. So, you know, this money, whether we raise the tax amount on cannabis or not is a different issue for me. Yes. What we do with the money is very important. I personally think that this money could be used to give directly to the schools to enhance our programs, to hire teachers and make sure that they're all certified. The LEAP program does not make sure that the teachers are certified. It's private. It's private. I can go and do it. I can go and teach if I want to. Exactly. And they do not discriminate, basically, on who gets to apply for these fundings. Right. It could be a religious school. It could be a group of home teachers that create an LLC and decide that they are going to apply for this money. We don't know if the tuition is going to be raised in order to get the difference from the LEAP program. And the one thing that in this book, when they were describing it that made me chuckle, was that it said parents can save money on their childcare. And I thought, what? Are you offering childcare? And I think it's because of the afters, before and after school childcare that some parents need in order to get to work. So drop your kid off at the LEAP until you're done with work. Right. That is my, but it was a very strange thing to put in this bill. If they're not careful with things like this, then let's forget all the real reasons why this is bad. Yeah. Okay? If you keep trying to milk marijuana for new taxes, even if this LEAP program was run by the state, if you push that price up too high, all that's going to happen is people are going to stop buying it and they're going to go black market again. You have got to be so careful. And they're right on the verge of that. It's cheaper for me to go and buy it illegally than it is to go to say green leaf. A lot, lot cheaper. But I like going to green leaf. Okay? Because I can trust their product. But if they keep pushing this up and up and up and make it so expensive, people are not going to buy it. Any other words you want to quickly say about 119? I really encourage people to read the bill, look, educate yourself. Yeah. Find out what it is and decide whether you agree with it or you do not. Right. Proposition 120. This is an interesting one. This is a really interesting one. I don't think I've, it's funny because we've got 119 that wants to raise taxes and then you've got 120 that wants to lower them. Hello. What's going on here? Well, 120 is a proposition and this got on the ballot because of signatures. You can, if you raise enough signatures on a petition, then you, and they're verified by the secretary of state as good signatures, then it can be put on the ballot. So this has been put on the ballot basically by people. So rather than by legislative action or a committee. So basically what this does is reassess property taxes and some taxes, this proposition would like to lower some taxes. They would like to stay the same and some they would like to raise. There are many, I look at this in tears actually. We have in our state a, first of all, lower taxes on veterans who have experienced damage by their service and then we have the seniors can get a discount on their property taxes. I do. Very good. I do. So, but the state on the, on the, I'm sorry, on the city on the lowering of those taxes do not, do not get a loss. The state back fills that so that the local municipality does not feel that loss in their property tax. What this bill will do though is allow certain people to have their subclasses of real and personal property taxes located within the limits of the authority lay leviying, which would be the county on property tax. What really frustrates me about this bill is that the, the entity that is not going to be affected by these taxes or assessments is producing mines and lands or lease holes, producing oil and gas. So even though some property taxes are going to be raised, we are not going to touch the land leases for oil and gas mines and wells. Well, the mines wouldn't be from oil and gas, it would just be the wells. Yes. I understand that when we give over $3 million in tax reductions or taxes for oil and gas now, why we would not be raising their taxes if we're going to be raising taxes on some of our local businesses. So, That seems terribly unfair. It does. And wrong. It is to me. Morally wrong. So, once again, I would advise people to please read up on Proposition 120 and see if you agree or disagree with the way they want to assess taxes. What might be a real hit to our local municipalities is that if our property taxes are lowered, that is going to affect our schools. And because that's where we, it's also, we use a lot of that property tax just to run the cities. Yes. To, for snow plowing, for keeping the lights on. So what will that mean? How will municipalities try to get those taxes, that revenue back? In what way will we have some creative ideas to get that money back into our general fund so that we can actually just run the city? So, there are a lot of questions about this. I really recommend that you read this Proposition 120 and decide where you stand on it. It almost sounds to me, and I'm going to go out on a limb here, that we have one amendment 78, we have Proposition 119 and Proposition 120, and they're trying to pull the wool over our eyes again. All the way, I agree, you may look at it that way, but it also seems to me that every one of these in some form is hitting our school funding. Yes. Because property taxes are huge on our school funding. So with, you know, 78, trying to use taxes, our tax dollars from marijuana to fund private entities to teach our children, and then the school, the property taxes being lowered to the point, where is the school district supposed to be getting these funds? That's right. From $1.6 billion, you'd have thought they could have found a little bit more than 16.4 to go into education. I just wish they'd write these things so they were understandable. They're written so that the entity that wants them to pass uses hook words. Very specific wording. Yes. That's why it's really good to do your research first and find out what it's about. Everybody should really pay attention to what's going on in your state because it affects you on a daily basis. Yes. Everything we vote on, every measure, every proposition, it affects you and your local municipality. It does. I don't know whether you're going to be back in the studio before November 2nd. I kind of hope that you are because I'd love to sit down and talk to you and talk about just what's it like to run as a politician in a mayoral race? Because it can't be easy. I wouldn't even know where to start, to be honest with you. Joan, thank you so much again for coming into the studio. Thank you so much for being able to explain this. Well, Nigel, I hope I did explain it so people can understand. And it is very difficult, which is why I kind of stumbled for the right words to explain it. Even if they didn't understand what you explained 100%, you have now pointed them in all the right directions to do some honest research. I hope so. And when I say honest research, do proper research, guys. Don't just jump on YouTube and find Fred making a comment or Nigel making a comment. Because what I say is interesting to listen to, I hope, but don't trust everything that I say because I have my opinions as well. We all do. We all have our opinions. So do some real, real research into what these three different things actually stand for. Anyway, once again, thank you so much for joining us here at Rational Politics. I'm Nigel Aves, your host. And don't forget, vote for Joan Peck on or before November 2nd. Thank you. Thank you, Joan.